What it's like to go to the Children's Museum. . . Without Children

My sister-in-law Jana just blogged about taking her boys to the Children's Museum, which got me to think about the one time I tried to visit the Children's Museum and failed miserably.

For Josh's birthday last year we purchased a Salt Lake City Pass. A really great pass for where you can go to the Clark Planetarium, The Children's Museum, Thanksgiving Point, This is the Place Heritage Park, Hogle Zoo, the Aquarium, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Utah Museum of Natural History, Red Butte Garden, and get a free lunch at the Lion House all for about $20 a person, as long as you do it all in one day! It's a great way to spend the day, . . especially if it's your birthday.

Since the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum was included in our purchase we thought we would go check it out. Little did we know what we were in for because we hadn't brought children.

First of all, when we got to the front desk the man selling tickets gave us the third degree about why we wanted to go to the museum. We told him we had passes and just wanted to check it out.

Then he asked to see our driver's licenses. So we got them out to show him. He took them from us as "collaterel" and fastened a bright orange bracelet around our wrists, which he said must be visible at all times.

After that we were allowed to go in, only to be stopped about every 10 feet by employees, who noticed that we didn't have kids with us, and who would then proceed to give us the third degree:

Did you come with children?
No.
Are you here with a group?
No.
Can I see your wrist band?
Sure. Here it is.
Okay.

I could feel their eyes on the back of my head as I walked away. Needless to say we could stand only a little over five minutes of being treated like child molesters or kidnappers before we decided to leave.

Now I'm sure you parents out there are feeling as though the Children's Museum must be a very safe place for your children. And you are probably right. But for someone who is desparately wanting, and trying to have children, but who cannot get pregnant it was humiliating and a huge slap in the face. It really ruined what was a perfect day. Josh and I left feeling like leppers and humiliated.

So my advice to anyone who would like to go to the Children's Museum in Salt Lake is this: Never go without children.

On the plus side, the rest of the places we went were absolutely amazing. I would highly recommend purchasing a City Pass if you have a whole day to spend site-seeing Salt Lake.